


Rabbits in the Briar Patch

by sassycatpants



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Family Fluff, M/M, Transformer Sparklings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2018-12-04 02:34:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11545653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sassycatpants/pseuds/sassycatpants
Summary: It's laughter and the excited beeping of a sparkling that draws Swerve to the yard behind the house.Self indulgent family fluff pieces collected into one place. They're all set in the same super basic verse, but whether they're actually specifically in the same timeline or even connected is generally up in the air.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This particular one is honestly just self indulgent fluff that was written because I needed something happy to distract from my grief over a friend who died Saturday evening. No real plot or anything.

It's laughter and the excited beeping of a sparkling that draws Swerve to the yard behind the house; the scene that greets him is exactly what he's expecting from the voices he'd heard before he looked out the window: Blurr, jogging at his slowest speed around the yard, and their daughter Derby toddling after him with her arms outstretched to tag the blue armor that's never  _quite_ in reach of tiny fingers. A smile slides across his face and he sneaks out into the yard to watch from the porch.

Blurr notices him first, flashing that pump-stopping, lopsided smile as he jogs past him and the minibot grins back before he finds himself with a lapful of sparkling who's lost interest in chasing her sire in favor of snuggling with her carrier. Swerve closes his arms around Derby immediately, rearranging her into something more comfortable and laughs as Blurr huffs at them for the lost attention. Turning on his heel, the former racer jogs back to join them, leaning on the railing of the porch.

"Were you two having fun then?"

"Well,  _she_ was. Wasn't quite fast enough for my tastes." Blurr leans down to drop a kiss on the minibot and tickles Derby's tiny pedes lightly, which prompts a shriek of excited beeping and a wince from his conjunx as his audials are assaulted with the sound. "But it was still fun, I suppose. She's getting faster."

"Well, she  _did_ inherit your frame." He can only hope she hasn't inherited his scathing personality as well, though Swerve's probably isn't much better.  _Better to have something all her own_ , he thinks absently. He feels Blurr drop onto the step beside him, and shifts closer to lean against his conjunx without thinking about it. "Really though, did you two have a good day?"

Draping over Swerve and propping his chin on a wheel to watch Derby fall asleep, Blurr hums softly. "Yeah. Yeah, we had a good day."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Blurr RP partner and I talk about Derby a lot sometimes and we love our child????
> 
> This is the result of all that talking lmao; we pretty much have her basic personality mapped out, and we know her future job and which parent she takes after in which department. Here's a glimpse into the future of the last chapter.

"And there's Silverglow rounding the curve --! What do you think Miss Derby, is she going to win this one, or will defending champion Downforce take the gold yet again?"

"WELL! Personally, I'm rooting for Silverglow but she's been running full out since the race began, while Downforce has paced himself and hasn't hit his top speed quite yet -- that's something my sire used to do himself, back when he was on the circuit --"

"Your sire is The Blurr, isn't he? Famous racer from the Golden Age, and fastest Cybertronian to ever race?"

"Right! That's my sire, he's great, you should say hello next time he comes to watch, I bet he'd like that -- he misses it sometimes I think, maybe I'll ask him to run a race with us sometime but see, he always told me that a  _good_ racer raced  **fast** but a  **winning racer**  raced  _smart_!" Derby laughed, hands fluttering as she gestured exuberantly to her co-commentator Cruise, who grinned back. Smiling growing wider, Derby continued into her mic. "Pacing yourself is important to winning a race, and that's something Silverglow, new to the circuit, hasn't quite mastered yet I think. So while she wins a lot of races -- good job Silverglow, you're doing great on that turn! -- she loses just as many and she'll continue to do so until she masters that particular skill."

"So you don't think she'll win?"

"I think she'll come  _close_ , but it's pretty likely that Downforce is going to win this one! But maybe she'll surprise us and pull off a last second win instead! They're coming up on the final stretch now --"

"AND DOWNFORCE IS POURING ON THE SPEED, THERE HE GOES --"

Bouncing in her seat and nearly vibrating, Derby leaned closer to the mic in front of her, waving her arms. "SILVERGLOW'S NOT GIVING UP YET, THAT'S DETERMINATION IF I'VE EVER SEEN IT -- AND SILVERGLOW'S DONE IT. SILVERGLOW HAS BROKEN THE FINISH LINE, ONLY KLIKS AHEAD OF REIGNING CHAMP DOWNFORCE! PAY UP CRUISE, THAT'S FORTY SHANIX!"


	3. And now for something different...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _One day,_ they told DER-8Y, _people will ask why our trade ships no longer come. They will wonder at our absence and our silence, and come seeking answers, and we will not be here to give them. That is why we have built you. And you, you who remembers our names and our histories and our greatest achievements and worst failures, will tell them._
> 
>  
> 
> _Cybertron is dead._
> 
>  
> 
> DER-8Y waits, and remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warless AU, vague mixed salad of continuity though that's not really more than background worldbuilding since Cybertron's already dead; the Golden Age technically never ended, but with increased population and energon requirements going up, the planet was unable to support life and finally tipped over the edge into death. This in turn resulted in the extinction of all life on the planet via slow starvation. Without energon and no fuel, there was no escape from the planet.

DER-8Y knows she is the only one left on Cybertron.

There were living beings on the planet once, DER-8Y remembers with a particular string of code that she'd once been told meant the emotion called  _fondness_. Not many -- that was why she had been built, because they were a dying race and knew it but someone needed to remember that they had once lived, someone who could one day tell those who came after -- but there had been.

(She remembers everyone who had existed of course, because she is been made to remember; most of them are faceless names, lists and rows and tables of designations and functions. But she'd  _known_  a select number once. They exist in DER-8Y's memory as names attached to faces listed in rows and tables but also in old dreams and old regrets and desperate, _faltering_ hope. They are her creators and though she was never built for it, DER-8Y loves them.

She is their final, greatest creation and she is more than they had ever hoped she'd be.)

* * *

_"Hello? DER-8Y, are you online?"_

**_DER-8Y IS ONLINE. QUERY?_ **

_"She's online, Perceptor! Now what?" The mech in front of her  -- Swerve, databanks and facial recognition software supplied - shuffled to the side and a new mech took his place. Perceptor, identified with the same programs, began typing furiously._

_"Now we check the programs are running correctly. Once that's done, Chromedome and Brainstorm will begin the memory preservation process. Rewind should be with Blaster, we'll need his help as well."_

_"Got it. I'll go grab them, then. Nice to meet you Derby!"_

* * *

_**SWERVE. I BELIEVE I HAVE FOUND AN ABNORMALITY IN MY CODE.**  
_

_"Oh boy. Wanna show me, kiddo? We'll see if we can fix it." Swerve leaned against the side of the structure housing most of DER-8Y's hardware, watching as the screen above him flickered lightning speed through code. "Stop!" he ordered, finally seeing the strands the program had clearly been speaking of. With a surprised laugh, he leaned back in his seat. "You're not malfunctioning, Derby. You're just feeling  
_ fondness. _It's an emotion. Not something we programmed you to do, but we did program you to learn. Learning how to feel probably should have been expected. It's not bad though, so don't worry about it."_

* * *

_Swerve placed his hands onto the console for a moment, staring up at the great monitor that they had built for her, and DER-8Y waited for him to speak. He was always touching her, sliding his hands across the many consoles in affectionate pats and soothing strokes. Usually by now he would be chattering away at her, telling yet another story of when Cybertron had been brighter and kinder and filled with more people. All of her creators had a tendency to speak of such things, stories and legends and memories blending together in her databanks._

_Swerve was not telling stories today; his face was grim as he stared up at her though his hands trailed gently over her user-input keys._

_(He could determine the chemical and molecular makeup of metals just with the sensors in his hands, he'd confided in her once with a shy smile. Part of his function as a metallurgist.)_

_"Blurr's gone," he said finally, quiet. "It's just me, now. Soon it'll be just you." She hadn't been meant to feel it, but the thought that Blurr, and soon Swerve as well, was gone... **hurt**. He and Swerve had been her primary caretakers as the others she'd once known had offlined within a few years of her coming online one by one until only the two of them had been left. Somehow, she'd come to consider them  **parents** , in their own way. DER-8Y flickered her screen for a moment before text scrolled across slowly._

**_I WILL REMEMBER HIM WELL FOR YOU._ **

_Swerve laughed, a noise more pain than joy. "Thank you, Derby." He left not long after, turning down the lights of her room for the final time. She knew he would not return._

* * *

 

Time erodes the planet slowly; still, DER-8Y loops her memory files and watches and waits, standing ever vigilant at her post. One day, someone will come to hear the stories she has to tell and the names she remembers. Someone will ask her what has become of the people who created her, and she will tell them that Cybertron is dead but that it lives on in her memories.

Until that day however, DER-8Y is content to bury herself in her own memories.


End file.
